Daniel Strauss on Objective Estimation of Listening Effort with EEG

We have analyzed the attentional dimension of listening effort using electroencephalographic methods and quantitative neurofunctional modeling in recent years. In particular, we have developed a neurophysical corticothalamic feedback model for listening effort correlates in event-related potentials (ERP) which allowed us to compare simulated and measured data. However, the resulting ERP paradigms are restricted to a certain class of stimulation protocols, limiting their applications, e.g., EEG-aided hearing instrument fitting. More recently, we have shown that attention related listening effort correlates can also be extracted from the oscillatory EEG activity when using a Hardy space projected versions these signals, combined with circular analysis of the instantaneous phase. In this talk, I would like to discuss these approaches and show our recent results for the EEG-aided hearing instrument fitting. I will also like to discuss some further applications such as neurocybernetic control of directional microphones.

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Daniel J. Strauss received a Ph.D. degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Mannheim, Germany, and a Ph.D. degree in Theoretical Medicine as well as the Habilitation from the Faculty of Medicine the Saarland University, Germany.

Daniel was a scientific assistant at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Mannheim, Germany from 1999 to 2001 and scientific assistant at the Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Saarland University Hospital from 2001-2004. In 2002 he was a visiting researcher at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles, USA (NSF-Scholarship), and associate of an multiscale modeling program at this institute until 2005. From 2002-2005 he has been the head of modeling and computational intelligence at the Leibniz--Institute for New Materials, Saarbruecken, Germany and since 2005 he is an associated professor and research fellow of this institute. In 2005 he was appointed as full Professor for Medical Engineering and is now full Professor for Systems Neuroscience & Neurotechnology as well as head of the Systems Neuroscience & Neurotechnology Unit at the School of Engineering at htw saar and the Medical Faculty of the Saarland University. He is also head of the MINDSCAN LAB for human-machine interaction in interactive virtual environments funded by the Federal German Ministry of Education and leading automotive and hearing system companies. He is founder of Key Numerics company.

His current research interests include the systems neuroscience of auditory attention and cognitive effort as well as neurotechnological approaches in auditory diagnostics/rehabilitation. Daniel is currently heading several international projects related to neurocognitive technologies, funded by the Federal German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Federal German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), the German Research Foundation (DFG), and industry.